


Victory

by A_Queer_In_Spaceland



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: All the Autobots are dead and I'm not sorry, Angst, I'm actually a little sorry about the Autobots, Multi, Not even Bittersweet ending, Sad Ending, Someone else dies but it's 700 words so I'm not spoiling, just sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-17 23:39:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14841416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Queer_In_Spaceland/pseuds/A_Queer_In_Spaceland
Summary: The price of victory is a heavy one. Actions have consequences and loss is a wild, untameable thing.Another angst filled oneshot born of my inability to let these poor things be happy.





	Victory

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who’s writing angsty oneshots instead of studying for their Uni Exams or writing their multi-chapters? Yeah, it’s me. I’m sorry that I’m not sorry. Anyway, this is loosely based in TFP but picture what you will.

A keening filled his audials, painful even at just a low volume, Starscream didn’t know where the aggrieved sound was coming from. He couldn’t process anything but the implication of Megatron’s announcement.

The Autobots were dead.

Shockwave’s plan had worked.

Their enemies were annihilated.

Mecha surrounding him rejoiced, elated that they had finally won. Yet Starscream’s joints were weak, held upright only by inertia but being dragged down by grief.

Skyfire.

Gone again.

Trice stolen from him on this infernal planet, first by ice, then by allegiance and now- _now by Megatron_. A guttural cry replaced the keening noise and only then did Starscream realise it had been him. A death hymn, pulled from his very spark. An unthinking act outside of a non-seeker's range of hearing. More unthinking acts followed. 

Energon was slick on his servos, his digits diving deep under Megatron’s panelling. Distracted by his triumph the warlord had taken his optics off Starscream at the precise moment the seeker snapped. Megatron’s battle-coding sprang to life with a fatal hum but Starscream was too focused on clawing out his spark to care. It wasn’t a fight, it was a savaging.

Dripping with a mix of their energon Starscream may have stood weakly -a gouge out of his torso and both wings brutally crushed where Megatron had tried to throw him off- but Megatron did not stand at all. Prone in an increasing pool of electric pink, his chest cavity a shredded mess. His spark had not guttered out just yet, a flickering light, perhaps salvageable still. 

The armada faced him silently, wide opticked and shaken. Starscream didn’t have time - if he could of even mustered it- to feel regret. Or fear for his life as Soundwave slunk forward from where he had passively watched his leader be brutally shredded into. What had passed in fury-filled nanoklicks for Starscream – the Seeker finally fuelled by what he’d been missing for the last billion attempts; rage to match Megatron’s – had taken almost a whole two of earth’s hours.

Chances to intervene had been plentiful. Some servos had been stilled by self-preservation, others by simple complacency. The decepticon spymaster was not one of these mechs.

Soundwave stepped forward and sunk to a kneeling position, Megatron's spark gave a weak flare-

“All Hail Starscream.”

-and then flickered out, as if Soundwave had blown the struggling thing out himself.

Starscream had taken a step back as the spymaster approached, the gravity of what he’d finally managed to do slamming into him harder than Megatron’s death throws. Under his visor Soundwave’s optics met the seeker’s and then Starscream knew. There was grief in him and it wasn’t for Megatron.

The seeker didn’t have time to wonder which ‘bot was worthy of breaking loyalty with Megatron, the echo of Soundwave’s words pounded into his processor. He’d finally gotten everything he’d wanted for the last four billion years.

The Autobots defeated.

Megatron dead.

The Decepticons _his_.

But his Skyfire dead.

A pyrrhic victory.

Starscream clenched his jaw and steeled his spark, it was still victory. He had work to do. 

-

Soundwave was waiting for him when he returned to his habsuite. They looked at each other for  a long moment, before Starscream softly sighed and held out his servo.

“Who?” Was all he asked, allowing the spymaster to pull their frames close. They hadn’t done this for millennia.

Not since Skywarp had grinned through the energon pouring from his intake, shuddering out a final jibe before going still in his trine leader’s arms, _I’ll say hi to TC for ya Screamer_. And vorns before that when Ravage’s com signal cut off with an abrupt burst of static and then forever fell dead. Insanity was the fate of a lone seeker, and a -Starscream stumbled. Neither Cybertronian nor the Human language they'd installed held a word for what Soundwave was. Soundwave's reply cut short Starscream's musings. The seeker leaving the lifeboat of semantics to grasp onto Soundwave instead. It was how they'd staved off that inevitable insanity after all. 

 “Jazz.”

Understanding dawned on the seeker and he let out a weak laugh, “No wonder I never caught him for long.”

“Negative. Jazz…Superior.” Soundwave’s monotone was frazzled, cracking in time with the pulses of sorrow from his EM field.

Starscream rested his helm in the centre of Soundwave’s chest, trying to draw the warmth of his barely audible spark into his own deathly cold frame. Their fields mingled, pushing and pulling to find an equilibrium, desperate to latch onto stability as they both drowned in their own grief.

“Tell me about him,” Starscream gently asked, and so Soundwave did.

And if emotion became clear in the spymaster’s voice, or optic fluid pooled on Starscream’s plating as he listened neither of them mentioned it. Here they would listen. They would grieve. And they would remember.

Tomorrow they would leave once again nothing more than cautious allies, but for tonight they would forget everything and relish in the comfort only found in mutual pain, in understanding. Losing a trine was close enough to the loss of a symbiont, the shattered mental link, spark trauma and aching sense of wrongness were common to both. This time it was a different grief. Starscream almost laughed - a bitter broken thing- as the thought occurred to him, they were 'widowers'.  

**Author's Note:**

> Me @ Me: Why can't I just let them be happy? 
> 
> This may grow longer, perhaps another two or three chapters detailing how these two run the Decepticon Empire together. Who knows, maybe it'll work out, maybe they'll kill one another. Maybe the Autobots aren't all dead? Maybe some lived? Probably not.


End file.
